Specialist Surfeit; Primary Care Paucity
Submitted by Dr. JG Kaplan on Sat, 2009-05-30 18:04
It's schadenfreude: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others. That's where I find myself as I observe the surfeit of specialists juxtaposed to a dearth of primary care docs.
As Dr. Pauline W. Chen said in "Where Have All the Doctors Gone?"—"I [don’t] envy Mr. Obama.... Any attempt to make health care more accessible will be doomed to failure without an adequate number of primary care physicians and a strong primary care system."
Internal medicine is one of the lowest paying post-residency choices with an average annual salary "approximately $5,000 less than the debt most med students carry upon graduation. The average radiologist salary is twice [that]” Medical students are "turned off by the possibility of caring for chronically ill patients, and the amount of red tape and paperwork general internists have to grapple with." Foreign medical graduates seek the subspecialties—no wonder! Who is going to do the primary care grunt work?
- Rubin R, New doctors avoiding most-needed, worst-paid field: general practice [Last accessed 12/8/08].
Further, see:
"What Does It Mean, Economically to Be a Front-line Primary Care Physician? Managed Care 101 in 2010 (Part IX)" – Originally published Monday, December 29, 2008
"Primary care, with its
"Primary care, with its sweeping vistas of the health spectrum, is what many of us understood as the essence of doctorhood when we entered medical school. Yet fewer and fewer of us actually commit to this track 4 years later.
Although the 2009 residency match saw the largest number of applicants in its history, the proportion of U.S. medical students matching in primary care fields, including internal medicine, pediatrics, and family medicine, continues to drop (see graph) — from 55.8% in 1998 to 41.0% in 2005 and to 40.0% in 2009.1 In a recent survey of 1177 fourth-year students, only 2% of the 274 who were interested in internal medicine said they intended to pursue general internal medicine."2
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